Basic Car Maintenance to Improve Gas Mileage

David Rizzo, fuel economy expert, explains the necessary basic car maintenance to improve gas mileage.

David Rizzo: Hi, I am David Rizzo, better known as Dr. Roadmap and now we are going to discuss basic car maintenance to improve gas mileage. Host: What basic car maintenance should I perform to improve to gas mileage? David Rizzo: First of all get a tune up or make sure your car stays in tune. Now with modern cars they like say, oh you don't need a tune up for a 100,000 miles, that's not quite true. They are trying to sell cars; they are trying to sell cars with the claim that we don't have to do much, our car last forever. Wrong. If you are interested in gas mileage, keep it in a quite state of tune. One of things you can do is to have the spark plugs changed. They go out pretty quickly. After about 25,000 miles they loose efficiency. After about 75,000 miles you may want to change the spark plug wires. You seldom see that in the car maintenance schedule but I guarantee you those plug wires have a big effect on your engines efficiency to burn out gasoline thoroughly. Other things you can do is when your oil, whether you do it yourself or you take it to a station, what you want to use is a Multi-grade oil not a Straight grade. For do it yourselfers with old cars, the temptation is to use a Straight grade like 30 Weight because it doesn't leak as much but that create internal friction with-in the engine. The engine has to work harder so you waste gas. So if you switch to a Multi-grade like 20-50, you can pick up 1.5-2.7% efficiency, engineers have it narrowed down that much. Lastly you want to make sure that your tires are in alignment. If you have hit a bad pothole and you know it shakes your car or you run into a curve a little too hot, get your alignment checked because if those tires are toed-in in the front, your car is having to work harder and it will cost you in gas mileage.